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No Bomb, Just Guts, Closes S. Dade Shopping Center

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SOUTH MIAMI-DADE – (CBS4) The call went out for police about a suspicious passage, at a bank, buzzing with flies. It wasn’t a bomb, but it was a stinky mess, and only in Miami could it be the cause for an hour-long evacuation of an entire shopping center.

The call came in shortly after 10 a.m. Tuesday. Someone at the Bank of America branch on Quail Roost Drive at SW 127th Avenue in SW Miami-Dade said a suspicious package was spotted near the bank.

That package created quite a buzz. Literally. Surrounding the suspicious package was a cloud of flies, unusual for a bomb, but still suspicious.

The Miami-Dade police bomb squad was called out. First, the bank was evacuated, and then, the entire Shoppes at Quail Roost shopping center, including a Publix supermarket.

Police were staged at the entrance to the center, blocking anyone from entering the parking lot, which had cleared after the evacuation and was oddly empty for the middle of the day.

Police even had a bomb-detection robot on site. As the entire shopping center was on hold, they went in to check out the fly-buzzing package.

Nuts. It was guts. Chicken parts and something that once belonged to a goat, according to a Miami-Dade spokesperson. It did not detonate when police checked it out. However, the contents explained the flies.

It’s not certain what the guts were doing there, as police would not speculate, however the use of animal entrails is common in Santeria rituals. In Miami, it would not be uncommon for someone having a problem with the bank, such as a foreclosure, to ask a Santero to help them.

Police allowed the bank and the shopping center to re-open. There was no word as to what was done with the guts.